I will be speaking @ Internet World in the Web2.0 theatre on 28th April 2009 from 16:40 hrs on “Three Dimensions of Internet Strategy”

The talk will revolve around an approach that let businesses put together a comprehensive Internet strategy order to optimize their revenues and profitability by connecting - communicating and collaborating more effectively with the stake holders of the business.

The slideshow is attached

So, do drop in. 

Regards

Abhishek

P.S.: Internet World will take place @ Earls Court in London between 28th-30th April 2009

I will be holding a FREE Website Clinic from 28-30th April at Internet World (Earl’s Court, London) at our booth.

I will be helping website owners improve their website one-step-at-a-time by giving them up to five actionable tips specific to their website after analyzing the same and understanding their online business goals.

Website Clinic is absolutely FREE of cost and there are no strings attached to it.

There will be a lot of rush as we have started getting request for booking time slots. So I suggest that you send an email to talash@indusnet.co.in and book your time slot in advance to avoid disappointment.

The takeaway from the presentation was -
Stick to fundamentals. Business is simple. If we complicate it for the sake of some buzzwords, we will see more such tough days!

Here is the presentation for you:

Earlier in the day, our Industry stalwart, Mr. B. Hari did a small workshop on Wealth Dynamics (the Roger Hamilton one) and how entrepreneurs / executives should adopt the path of least resistance to succeed.

A great day out!

P.S. A few days back, I shared some random recession strategies. You might like to check them out as well.

P.P.S. Thank you Nasscom, for such a wonderful event.

The presentation is here:

If you are interested in availing the service described in the presentation or you know of someone who might be interested, please feel free to refer to http://www.hire-a-designer.com

Jaimie Sirovich of SEO Egghead Inc. has done this compilation and is available on his blog at:

http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/mattcuttsarama-a-summary-of-useful-stuff-matt-cutts-has-said-p112.html

I think this is one of the most trustworthy list of ‘tips’ that you can find in one place. Some of them may be too naive, but is worth a reminder.

Enjoy and add any recent buzz from the horse’s blog

Out of curiosity I tried the same to see if Google India is repeating the same mistake.

The results were shocking:

The problem persists!

I hope Google takes a note of this and tries to fix it soon.

It can be a political fraud when someone do horse-trading of members of legislative assembly / parliament to reach the coveted majority mark in the parliament. Or cast their influence to get a contract awarded to his favorite business house.

Then we have been subjected to corporate fraud where Harshad Mehta brings down the market single-handed or highly recognized corporate teams bring down companies like Lehman Brothers, Enron, Worldcom and most recently Satyam.

So what’s next?
I can see a high probability of a social media fraud!

This is very much probable due to the volume of social content that is being created and the level at which private data is getting exposed to the public (or is at risk of getting exposed). There are so many companies launching sites which collect and process personal and business information as Web2.0 web services or SaaS systems. Many of them claim to have solid privacy policies and data protection measures. However, I seriously doubt the claims of most websites and waiting for someone to come up and disclose that they have been funding their operations by misusing the copyrights or selling private information in sizable chunks to third parties.

I was just wondering at its probability and the consequences. Any ideas?

Technology is as good as its implementation.

Many a time, little imagination is put into implementation of the technology which is existing. If the existing technology is properly explored, understood and implemented in creative and innovative ways, I think it will do a lot of good to the mankind than decades of new inventions. For billions, the usage is falling behind the rate of discovery.

Let us implement the available tools and technologies properly, because poor implementation will not make any difference to the mankind and the guy next door (for the sake of simplicity).

Thoughts are welcome…

Today I got the answer at Seth Godin’s blog.

Because it brings around change. Status-quo is being challenged.
Things will not work the way they used to work. Innovation and hard work will score over luck and speculation.

It is a problem for those, who were lousy in their work.

It has not changed anything for the fit entrepreneurs and enterprises. In fact, it has just opened new opportunities for them. They will survive, for they remained grounded to reality. But, unfortunately, thousands of people took the sunny days for granted. And I am sure those people will wake up to this new world and realize - "Someone has moved their cheese".

I feel much safer today - for I know that my adaptability and hard work is setting me apart from the vulnerable one. 

So, if you are a creator and someone who have always "been in action" and loves to be "in action", I bet you are enjoying these days!

• Three column templates are in demand.
• White & gray color for background is working well.
• Sufficient text-area and eye-space is common amongst the bestsellers.
• In cases, where people have bought two column layouts, preference has gone to layouts with wider left panel.
• Buyers prefer small, simple images that are smartly placed instead of portrait sized screen wide panoramic graphical layout.

So, when you make the next design, keep these in mind, so that you are closest to the taste of your customer. 10K registered users cannot be wrong

Hotel / Stay:

Accommodation in UK can vary between GBP 10 per night (for bunker beds) to GBP 300 (for five star hotels).

I have stayed in four star hotels (Thistle / Holiday Inn) as well as B&B in various locations like Kings Cross, Earls Court, Edgware Road and Kensington Gardens. I found the services in hotels to be very cold and indifferent.  I found Bed & Breakfast to be much more friendly, accommodating and economical. They charge between GBP 35 to GBP 60 per night and tops it up with a good homely English breakfast in the morning.

A good place to search for Bed & Breakfast in the UK is http://www.travelstay.com/

Internet:

Try to check if your Bed & Breakfast offers you free wireless Internet connectivity or not. Most of them do now a days. As a back up plan and to stay connected when you are traveling or in meetings, you can opt for 3G wireless broadband. I opted for 3-mobile and it works quite well. The dongle cost me GBP 60 initially and then I just need to top it up whenever I am visiting UK. Effectively I and up paying GBP 10 per month for connectivity.

Mobile:

You can get cheap Pay-As-You-Go sim cards at the airport. I have used Talkmobile which comes with long distance facility at very reasonable cost (the only funny part was that calling India was cheaper than calling a local number). They also have GPRS, so that you can access Internet through your mobile phone and check your emails on the move. I use it all the time and it works quite well. They have also started doing online-recharge after I ranted about it after my last trip on my blog

Food:

Since, I prefer Indian vegeterian food, I find Masala Zone to be the best one. They provide a complete meal (the closest I have found to home cooked food in London) for under GBP 10. There are numerous eateries and restaurants. I do not think you can spend more than GBP 15-20 on your food unless you are in a mood to reward yourself for something!

Getting around:

The best way to get around London is its public transport system. Grab an Oyster card (even if you will stay inb London for a short duration), top it up with some money and use it everywhere. I find it most convenient and economical. If you plan to travel extensively on a given day, consider buying a day pass for less than GBP 6 and you will have unlimited travel on tube and bus (within couple of zones) for the day.

So, If you are smart, you can have a comfortable and enjoyable working stay in London quite economically. Try these tips next time you are around.

(click above to see live results)

It is interesting to note that Joomla templates have gained a lot of popularity in eastern European countries compared to the south Asian countries. In Northern America a very interesting trend has been spotted. Regions like Nevada, Alabama and Nebraska are virtually untouched by the Joomla revolution!

I cannot help without this shameless plug

TemplateKingdom.com, our template website, provides high quality joomla templates. In fact you can see those templates LIVE in action before making a purchase. My team can also put together custom joomla template design and integration for you! So get in touch with our guys at http://www.hire-a-designer.com/

Is this the future of web stats? And it can be interesting if the same video is shot over time-line with specific location kept constant. And yes, a facility to fast forward and slow motion won’t hurt. It will really help us understand how the traffic patterns have changed over time.

One of my pet projects - TemplateKingdom.com yesterday crossed 10,000 registered users mark. I am happy that our product has been able to make a difference in so many lives. I look forward to expand its reach further in days to come!

Thank you everybody!

Regards
Abhishek

Here are some street smart strategies to survive the recession:

1) Invest in marketing. Your competitors are not doing so to save money. You shall go ahead and make the kill to get maximum leads and exposure. As we know offense is the best defense. So it is best to attack recession with your full might and try to go all out to grab the business that might be available to you. It will help you increase your market share in a shrinking market.

2) Identify deadwood inside your organization. They sneak in when you are at a high and do not care about few ‘under-performers’. However, it is easy to identify them when the going gets difficult, because they are unable to earn back their own cost to the company. Put together a system to calculate cost and revenue from each and every individual in the company.  It is difficult to do, but this is the only way you know if you have the right team or not. If a guy is not earning for you, he must be told so, given a warning and an opportunity to improve quickly. If he does not, you shall let him go.

3) Start a new business line which creates more value in the current market dynamics. It is best if your new service has the same target audience as your existing business. It will just make life simpler. To get you more bandwidth, consider closing a business, which does not excite you or seems to have a bleak future. Recession is the best time to do such transitions.

4) Partner with your clients. Deliver real results with real benefits. Calculate the benefit you have given to the client and see how you can maximize it. If your services and/or products are not delivering the value that a client expects, you need to do a serious re-think on your business model. Recession is a result of blind-mad-rush where companies forgot the basics of business and got swayed away in the glamorous world of equity, valuation, expansion, etc.

5) Sort out the internal processes and do some house-keeping. This is the only time when you are a little bit free and you can actually take care of your home in a proper way. Processes, policies, products, offerings can be reviewed, polished and realigned to take advantage of the next boom.

Feel free to add your points -

Update:
Recently my friend Arun has put together his set of tips! So why not grab them as well
http://www.arunagrawal.com/2009/02/20/recession-busting-strategies/

He is an interesting guy. And we met in an interesting way. He commented on one of my blog post and we got connected. When he was traveling to Kolkata, I invited him over for a chat.

During our course of discussion, we discussed random things. Then surprisingly, he sends me a blog link which highlights the point we discussed. I must say, I was impressed. The points were nicely taken and documented.

So, I thought why not share some ‘minutes’ of that meeting with wannabe entrepreneurs!

Here is the link: http://businessnerd.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/interview-with-mr-abhishek-rungta/

I have recently given an interview to Viraj Sawant of new-web-business.com on my views as "Blogging as a career". I found the interview interesting and have expressed my opinions strongly. Feel free to have a look:

http://www.new-web-business.com/internet-entrepreneur-in-india-abhishek-rungta-interview/

Please go ahead and take this pledge at http://nenonline.org/eweekPartner.do?method=fetch&businessFn=eweekPartnerRegister

There was no takeaway from the movie:

- No entertainment
- No message
- No reality

If the movie is all about its technical excellence, I did not see anything exceptional (as an audience).

I found the story line to be a sadistic satire, which picked up the the ‘worst’ of the slum life and has portrayed on a large canvas to tell the world that India is not only a country of snake charmers and call centers, but also a country of slums!

It seems the movie follows Murphy’s Law - "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong".

I was also shocked to see the nomination for Mr. A. R. Rahman. It is not that I don’t like his music. Undoubtfully he is one of the greatest musician in India. But he has done better scores than the ones that have been nominated. The ones he has done for Slumdog Millionaire does not come close to his best. If he has to be honored, then why not honor his best work. Why was he ignored in past? Only because he was part of a Bollywood production house?

These nominations leave a lot of questions unanswered.

I wont be excited if they win the Oscars. It is unfortunate.